Daniel Cormier thinks Ilia Topuria is making a mistake by splitting with his longtime team before UFC 317.
Topuria (16-0 MMA, 8-0 UFC) has parted ways with coaches Jorge and Agustin Climent ahead of his vacant lightweight title fight against Charles Oliveira (35-10 MMA, 23-10 UFC) in the June 28 main event at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (ESPN+ pay-per-view, ESPN, ESPN+). It was an amicable split, but the now Madrid resident is hours away from his team.
Topuria had been training at Climent Club in Alicante, Spain since he was a teenager, which led him to a UFC featherweight title and back-to-back knockouts over Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway. Cormier questions Topuria’s decision to move on from the team who brought him so much success.
“Ilia Topuria wants to fight Islam (Makhachev) but needs to get through Charles Oliveira first, especially when we are hearing that he and his team are kind of going in separate directions,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel. “Just because of the schedule, they said it’s no bad blood. I really don’t know how, at this point, a month before what will be your opportunity to win a second title, how much effect that will have on Team Topuria.
“If I’m Ilia, I’m still just using those guys because even if I have to do my training camp with someone else, I know that those guys know me so well, that if they can get with me for a week, two weeks, we are still so aligned – especially if there’s no bad blood, we’re still so aligned that we will get through the fight, and we will still be able to coexist. Not only coexist, but also we gel. This is the team that got him from a young, young man, to being 16-0 and a UFC champion. Beating the two greatest featherweights of all time. So to have that familiarity is very important to an athlete. …To me, that’s a little bit odd.”
For his UFC featherweight title defense against Max Holloway this past October at UFC 308, Topuria did his camp in Madrid with his coaches traveling back-and-forth between the two cities.
